Explore the Era

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

John MasonArtist

John Mason (born 1927) was raised in the Midwest and Nevada, and moved to Los Angeles at the age of 22 to study ceramics at Otis Art Institute. In 1954, following a short stint at Chouinard Art Institute, Mason returned to Otis to train in ceramics under artist Peter Voulkos. Mason and Voulkos developed a close working relationship, sharing a studio where they developed new equipment for experimenting with ceramics, exploring new possibilities in scale, surface quality, and technique. After meeting Walter Hopps and Edward Kienholz in 1957, Mason joined the stable of artists at the Ferus Gallery, exhibiting there several times until the gallery’s closure in 1966.